Psychology of a show. Autobiography.

“I was swinging you in my arms when – at the municipal council – people were shouting Down with Ceausescu!!!”. The tale of my parents is the only memory created to stand for the early years of what I call “psychology of a generation”. A psychology of victory and defeat, of fight and resignation of giving up.
Each anniversary was accompanied by a historical celebration: the birth of democracy.

At 10, there were 10 years after the revolution…

I fell in love with a national news program and I started to question some of the things I heard around me…” who we vote for, what was wrong in communism, what might or not be better from now on..” Little did I understand, little did I worry about the years to come. I was happy to receive water melons as birthday presents and couldn’t wait for Christmas, the only time of the year we had oranges. I was excited for our Pentium 1 with its first internet connection.

At 13, there were 13 years after the revolution…

I got my first bike, the first cell phone and the first trip abroad. In my family, democracy felt better and better. At 14, I moved on my own. Gradually, the questions and answers got more elaborated and I stacked to the idea that we are better than the system, and if we can’t change the legacy of “x years before the revolution” we can invest in people who can erase it in time, piece by piece.

At 18, there were 18 years after the revolution.

The same TV channel I fell in love with at 10 asked me to speak in a feature report about “how does it feel like?” It was then when I decided not to do it again.

Year by year, we, the 89’ generation, grow older together with the story of a country which was reborn once we were born. It’s the psychology of a haunting game; neither good, nor bad…it’s just the way it is…

…a few days ago, the story got at a cornerstone. How does it feel like?

As if I am the bystander of a show that I believe in…the show in which the intrinsic motivation of the actors is more than I can understand. The scene is bigger than I thought and the actors perform better than I anticipated. It is the show of a generation. As a bystander, I only hope to applaud before the act is finished, before the curtain falls down, and the voices of the actors will be drowned by the fake performers who pull down the curtain and don’t act because of the fright of the many or the concern of stealing from the many.

As such, this year, there will be one year more after the revolution. The 89’ one.

The precipice on the stairway of pleasures

A good sleep makes you forget that some small pleasures can have a side effect. Stepping instinctively again and again, algorithmically high and happy, on the stairway of small pleasures, brings up – inescapably – the faded storms of reason. And a precipice.

There are things you do while you live, which tickle you up and down the spine… to the tip of your toes: the Sunday morning snooze, slow sips of coffee, a dive in the book you love, the day you meet your deadlines, a morning hug, a touch, your favourite person’s smile…and a few forbidden others…

It’s the stairway on which you’re not convinced if the steps are bewilderingly biting from yourself or rather it’s the other way around. It shifts your mood from vexed to happy, from happy to enthusiast…From enthusiasm to excitement. ..they charge you up and move your blood around each and every cell of the corps you live in.

In the reasoned moments, the precipice feels deeper and the first impulse is to take control and enjoy only some from your long list of small pleasures. It’s a mysterious altitude in which the temptation and pleasure to jump overlap the threat of crushing yourself in the precipice. If you don’t decide, before you know it, it’s Friday again… and before you know it once more, the jumps and steps you’ve already made on this stairway will have been faded away, but still pricking you harder than you thought ten stairs ago….

Secret garden